The Museum of the Revolution

What it is

The Memorial Museum of the 1989 Revolution occupies a former barracks building on Strada Oituz, five minutes off Piața Victoriei. It was founded in 1990 by people who had been in the street days earlier, and it has never been tidied into a state museum. Expect photocopies, hand-labelled objects, a wall of photographs of the dead and an archive room that researchers still use.

That roughness is the reason to come. The displays are not there to explain the revolution to you from a distance — they are the material the city kept.

What you actually see

How to read it

Do the museum first and the walk second. Nothing in Piața Victoriei is signposted at the scale of what happened there, so the plaques only register once you have seen the chronology. The Opera balcony, the cathedral steps and the corner of Strada Timotei Cipariu in Elisabetin are all within half an hour of each other on foot.

If you read Romanian, the leaflet texts are the most affecting part of the collection: most were typed on office machines and reproduced by hand.

Getting there

From Piața Unirii, walk south down Strada Alba Iulia to Piața Victoriei and continue past the cathedral — ten to twelve minutes. Trams 1 and 2 stop at Piața Maria, seven minutes away. There is street parking on Oituz, metered on weekdays.

Questions